So a bit of a preamble. Towards the end of dad Larry's life, he used to look out at his trees/yard and get sad. He would say that he could no longer water his trees, take care of his yard, take out his own trash. He would get sad, but also mad. When he saw technology, or companies would say they were going paperless he would be angry, not everyone understands etc. I felt his frustration from both sides.
However, when dad Dave gets upset, or sends back my gifts, I have baggage with him so I take it personally. I have recently been trying hard to take the personal out of it and see it from his point of view, using Dad Larry and his experiences as a guide. And I have more compassion now, no anger, and no hurt over that situation.
Last time I was at mom and dads, dad kept hopping up out of his chair and going into the craft room. After a few trips mom asked if we got to know what he was doing. He was angry and said some snarky remark about how he was just that important. So mom and I buried our heads in our books/games and went about our business. So a few trips later mom asked again. Now my dad is rude, unkind, etc. at times, but he doesn't yell and scream. But dad got loud and said if you must know, I need to print this off but I am too stupid to do it and walked out. Mom just said that dad gets so frustrated when he cannot do things. I have thought a lot about that, and since dad has been doing those types of things for so long I take for granted that he knows how and it comes easily. Same thing I told myself about the electronic frame I sent. He has been setting stuff like this up for years, just add email and password etc. that I took for granted that he can still easily do it. But the fact is, even things he has been doing, are now not something he can do easily. As we get older, even things we have done a hundred times make us pause to think sometimes. So I have let go of the anger that he sent the gift back, the hurt that the gift was not good enough or up to his standards, and I have replaced it with understanding and compassion for his frustration it must have made him feel. I have added compassion that I must have rubbed salt in the wound by saying I had researched it and it was supposed to be easy to setup. I know that I get frustrated when I cannot do the seemingly simple things in my life even after looking up how, watching a you tube on it, things the kids do for me, and I will try to remember that in gifts I give from now on.
I also look back and think the times that he is the biggest jerk is when something evokes a lot of personal emotion for him. He may not handle it correctly, but I will try to look at it from his perspective from now on and understand that he is not able to handle highly emotional things for whatever reason. I cannot do anything about that, I can, however, learn how to understand and handle the emotion on my end.
